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All posts by Ryoko Hamaguchi

About the author Ryoko Hamaguchi

Ryoko Hamaguchi is a second-year student at Harvard Medical School currently completing her clinical rotations at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. As a self-taught visual artist, she has been drawing and painting since the age of 3, primarily producing works in watercolor and ink while exploring other mediums such as graphite, charcoal and digital illustration. She began to explore the intersection of art and medicine during her undergraduate career at Stanford University, where she pursued an honors distinction in the interdisciplinary arts through a collection of pieces situated around the themes of the human body and illness—some weaving a visual narrative of disease through portraits of patients, others drawing inspiration from her basic science research in cardiovascular regenerative medicine. She continues to actively incorporate visual art into her medical training here at HMS, including the pieces showcased here, as well as scientific illustrations published in Circulation (Jan 2017), and an appearance as an artist and speaker at the 8th International Poetry and Medicine Symposium and Hippocrates Awards in May 2017. Looking to the future, she hopes to take leadership in developing innovative applications of visual art in various facets of medicine, ranging from installations focused on the humanization of illness to the use of visual aids in medical education and the communication of research to a wide audience.

Intimate Watercolor and ink on paper Reference: Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, 6th ed. How does one visually depict the topic of anatomical donation and cadaver dissection, memorializing the donors’ ultimate gift to medical education while preserving the sanctity of their bodies? “Intimate” is one